source file: mills2.txt Date: Sun, 6 Jul 1997 15:07:33 +0200 Subject: Re: Wolf Tuning 1125 - "In praise of meantone..." From: Daniel Wolf Lucy wrote: '' Assuming that he is correct (I have no reason to doubt him on this), and the fashion moved from meantone into well temperaments, and eventually 12tET, I wonder why meantone tunings were abandoned.'' My post clearly did not say this, but rather that the well temperaments were an abandoned cul-de-sac within a generally meantone era, and that the repertoire associated with the well temperaments had certain attributes that were not taken up by the immediately following generations of composers, who were apparently satisfied with the tonal resources of meantone (whether or not they actually used meantone is another question!). From my posting, I wanted to suggest that 12tet was not an historicallyconsequent development out of the well temperaments, but rather a later development directly out of meantone, and reflecting different musical priorities than those which gave rise to the well temperaments. Lucy also writes: ''The difficulty of quickly retuning meantones would have severely restricted the harmonic possibilities, yet well temperaments immediately offered keyboard players both tuning and intervallic novelties, in different keys.'' Which is not quite right. Tuning meantone and Werckmeister III or Kirnberger III involve setting _exactly_ the same tempered series, and then tuning series of just intervals - in meantone, a series of 5/4 thirds, inthe well temperaments, a series of 3/2 fifths. Therefore there is no question of the speed of retuning here. Without retuning, the well temperaments offer 12 usable key signatures, but if the target is ''intervallic novelties'' then using more than then the 6 ''in tune'' signatures in meantone will certainly greater novelty of the sort. Received: from ns.ezh.nl [137.174.112.59] by vbv40.ezh.nl with SMTP-OpenVMS via TCP/IP; Sun, 6 Jul 1997 18:06 +0200 Received: by ns.ezh.nl; (5.65v3.2/1.3/10May95) id AA05723; Sun, 6 Jul 1997 18:06:55 +0200 Date: Sun, 6 Jul 1997 18:06:55 +0200 Received: from ella.mills.edu by ns (smtpxd); id XA05730 Received: (qmail 10172 invoked from network); 6 Jul 1997 16:06:51 -0000 Received: from localhost (HELO ella.mills.edu) (127.0.0.1) by localhost with SMTP; 6 Jul 1997 16:06:51 -0000 Message-Id: Errors-To: madole@mills.edu Reply-To: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Originator: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Sender: tuning@eartha.mills.edu